The second time, my card didn't go through (this happens one time in a few; I obviously need to phone MBNA pretending to be John Lewis and sort it out; I love getting the vouchers but I pretty much hate operating the John Lewis card because the experience is awful) and when I went to put in another credit card - there were no tickets in my basket again!
Also, no I don't want to save 25p by paying for my ice creams three months in advance. Maybe if you didn't put an extra screen in the booking process just to turn that down, it would be slightly less irritating to go through the booking three times.
But. Einaudi. Barbican. October 24. New work, yay!
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tanais and elinor and (I'm sure she has an LJ!) Heiko, it was amusing to catch this news story today: "Jamie Waylett, 19, who plays bully Vincent Crabbe in the film series, pleaded guilty to growing 10 cannabis plants in tents at the Kilburn house....The court heard police found shots of the plants on Mr Waylett's camera after he was arrested for taking a picture of officers." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/londoI don't disapprove of growing cannabis (the drug enforcement in the UK is a masterpiece of ignoring the issues and demonising the wrong people), but keeping photos of your hydroponics is like posting your mother's maiden name on Facebook and wondering why your bank account gets hacked. Much more worrying is the bit where "Waylett had been videoing the road side for a music compilation when he caught the attention of officers". Why was that so suspicious? Why did the police get to look at the footage on his camera? Did they have a warrant for that? If not, is that not a violation of his privacy?
elinor could eat it. I'm sure I have a dozen recipes in various cookbooks but himself found the BBC Good Food recipe online and I changed it a lot ;-)250g of ground almonds - we pulverised two 100g packets of slivered almonds in the magimix, so I scanted all the other amounts
200g of caster sugar - I always use a little less sugar and 180g was more than enough
250g of butter - well, that's just silly; polenta cake should be made with olive oil - I used a few splashes of pure orange oil (from lakeland - probably Boylian), a spoonful of Pasolivio tangerine olive oil (time to stock up in Paso Robles soon) and half and half of Waitrose Extra Virgin and a 'Light' olive/extra virgin olive oil blend measured halfway between the 1/3 and 1/2 cup measure
3 eggs
1 lemon (the recipe says 3 lemons but oil adds more liquid than butter and we had the orange flavouring)
100g polenta - the instant packet mix works just fine
1tbsp baking powder
peaches - I picked up a reduced punnet of slightly bumped peaches I wanted to use up so I cut three of them into chunks, removing the dints, and grated over cinnamon from a whole stick using the microplane grater which produces a wonderful fine dust.
if you're using butter, you cream the butter and sugar; that's much easier with oil and sugar. Beat in the eggs, zest the lemon then squeeze it in. Fold in the almonds and polenta and bakng powder.
We use silicon cake pans so no oiling is needed; for this amount (which the original recipe says serves 8), we used 12 silicon muffin cases and the loaf pan (this wants not to be too thick, and I wanted individual servings). Without the peach you would just pour it in and bake; we spooned in mixture to cover the base of the cases and pan then spooned in a piece of peach per muffin case and the equivalent amount of peach into the loaf pan and then covered with more mixture leaving room to rise.
oven 160/140 fan/gas mark 3 for 50 minutes; the cakes in silicon cupcakes took a few minutes less, the loaf pan a few minutes longer. the top will look golden and the edges will look well defined. this is such a moist cake that testing with a skewer doesn't help much.
I microwaved the peach chunks with a spoonful of rich, dark honey and a spoonful of water for a minute or so and let it cool, for something between compote and syrup. the original recipe uses a mixture of limoncello and icing sugar.
Here in the UK, what we call the 'quality' daily newspapers, the broadsheets that used to be, tend to have a smaller readership than the Sun and the tabloids. Salacious gossip, paparazzi photos, calls for crackdowns on civil liberties 'for the sake of the children' and a topless model have sold a lot more papers than serious investigative journalism; it's that blurred line between entertainment and news. I'm going to have to quote some Billy Bragg.
'there's a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders
next to a picture of a woman in stockings and suspenders.
could it be an infringement of the rights of the press
to print pcitures of ladies in states of undress?'
So, is leaking stolen tweets any different from celebrity gossip? Is it hypocritical for people to want their own privacy and give public figures none? Is this different from when Cnet googled Eric Schmidt and were blacklisted by Google? What are the new media ethics?
The files were actually created a year or so back, and I have no idea how the date shifted like that, but isn't it nice that Windows is prepared for the eventuality...
Microsoft is finally letting people try some of the Office 2010 applications. The Technical Preview code includes the main desktop applications, but not the web apps or the SharePoint server that you need to run those web apps and enable live collaboration; we haven't seen the improved Windows Mobile Office apps, either. Without those key features, how much is actually new in the new Office? We got our hands on the code to find out. Read on for our early Office 2010 review.
The Office 2010 versions
Microsoft has confirmed that it has simplified the lineup of its verious Office 2010 SKUs and that all versions of the software will contain OneNote. So what do you get?
Don't like the ribbon? You will!
You have to get used to the Office 2010 ribbon - and now it’s a lot easier to get used to.
That's an interesting selection of ebooks (and prices) on the Borders UK site. What connects them? They're what you get when you search for Charles Stross, as there are no ebooks available. Beyond the amusing fact that apparantly Stross=fiction+cross-gender+stress (no comment! no comment!), it says to me that the ebook market isn't mature enough for the mainstream. And while the Elonex eBook is a cheap and cheerful ereader that might appeal to mainstream readers, I think it has several problems and some hard competition (and not from Amazon). Read on for details
Elonex and Borders dip a toe into the ebook market - my view of what the eBook offers and what it's up against, in FT Digital Business
Hands On Elonex eBook review - my in-depth review with lots of pictures of the buttons and interface
A reference to Richard Nixon? Why yes, it might be... And for the record, it didn't need her stupidity, cupidity and willingness to use her children as human poker chips to make me dislike her; blood sports from a plane will do it every time.
is that I was too busy *being* it. I need the T shirt of this...
EDIT
Even funnier is that when I looked up the URL of this, the first thing my search found was - people arguing whether the grammar of the joke is wrong!
"This headline rush to the cloud is beautiful for some things and misguided for other things".
or
"I think that Eric Schmidt and Vic Gundotra [of Google] overstated when they said "the Web has won". I felt it’s the American picture of George W Bush on the aircraft carrier with the banner saying 'mission accomplished'."
For me it finds recent IT Pro posts, and a story on The H in the current results; in the archives it says it goes back to 1998, though the first story is from 2007 and the second, though marked as 2008 is actually from 2004 (the disclaimer at the bottom says 'Dates associated with search results are estimated and are determined automatically by a computer program'). 1998 marks my time at AOL, when I was quoted in press releases as well as writing about them; 2002/3 has me in Computing, reviewing on Amazon UK and writing for the Taipei Times (it's actually a reprint from the Guardian) about the first flood of spyware. By 2006/2007 Google has a lot more of my writing - for some reason November 2007 was a very quiet month. For 2008/2009 it includes my annual company report (who thought that Experian would be a news publisher rather than a primary source) and it doesn't find any of my articles on TechRadar or Tom's Guide. I'd say maybe 60% of the articles that I write that go online are being picked up as written by me, so I'd give it 6/10.
It did find a few stories that turn out to be about me, at least peripherally; http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1
IT Expert magazine
Promote Your Page Too
I think most of my friends and connections know that unless you are very lucky as well as very good, fiction is not a paying career; Pratt is one of several authors who are good enough that one feels instinctively they should be swimming in money - instead I believe they're more wading through the shallows of Layoff Beach. I keep being told that the disintermediation of the Internet is an opportunity for us content producers; I hope so...
That's not the same thing as mobile open source, as HTC showed this morning - launching what I think of as the first 'independant' Android phone; it's got the Android equivalent of the HTC Flow interface on it (I wonder if that will slow it down at all), it's not been pushed by the Android folk to look far too much like a Sidekick and it has full Flash on. I can no longer wave my copy of Skyfire on Windows Mobile and say I have the only full Flash mobile browser - but I still get Silverlight and PDF and my banking site works ;-)
And the BlackBerry is charging ahead as a consumer phone as well as a business tool; Simon and I have a batch of app reviews over at the ever-expanding Know Your Mobile site - did you know you could get free dictation software from Vlingo?
There were 190 complaints which Ofcom considered with regard to Rules 2.2 and 5.13 - the duty not to mislead the audience and the duty not to give undue prominence to personal opinions on matters of public policy or controversy. They dismissed the complaint of misleading the audience (2.2) on the grounds that it was clearly "presenter opinion" - possibly because before weighing in with a biased opinion Barnett said "I know I shouldn't be biased" - and that the show "did include sufficient and important opposing arguments" because two of the six callers were medical professionals who were "largely uninterrupted by the presenter" even though they said "Barnett's treatment of the nurse who criticised her handling of the topic was at times dismissive and impatient" (5.13). So advice to broadcasters to do better, but no judgement against LBC.
I'm disappointed because Ofcom seems to be saying that it's OK for the official voice of the broadcaster to be ill-educated, foolish, misleading and downright wrong because the general public can ring in and correct them; this assumes that someone who knows the facts and has the time hears the broadcast and manages to get on air. That' doesn't seem to reflect the high standards of broadcasting I’d like to see in this country, or that level I hope Ofcom would hold broadcasters to. And the judgement on 5.13 is based on the different way national and local broadcasters are treated; a national broadcaster has to be impartial within a single programme or series; for a local broadcaster it's enough to ensure no undue prominence is given to views "across 'all programming on a service dealing with the same or related issue within an appropriate period'" (quoting Ofcom quoting the legislation). But is that going to reach people who were mislead by the initial programme? Is there an assumption that people listen to local broadcasting regularly and that they will remember and readjust their view?
As a journalist myself, and as someone with plenty of opinions, I hate to see sloppy reporting and factual inaccuracy disguised by a veneer of opinion, especially when it's science. I can have an opinion on, for example the Windows 7 interface; Fitts Law is much less up for debate. And actual medical science and the fall in vaccination leading to an increase in *diseases I thought we were well on the way to eradicating? That's plain irresponsible.
*I started by writing 'childhood diseases' but I remember a friend's husband getting measles at the age at which it was at best excruciatingly painful and at worst life-threatening. Measles causes brain damage and death as well as spots and a week in bed. I was 23 when I got chickenpox. Diseases children get aren't some junior, sugar-coated variety.
- Location:San Jose, CA
The coffee sustained us through another round of 'where have they hidden it?' (we've only lost one round of this - the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory we located but it had no sign and didn't look at all open so we didn't go in, O's Bistro in Kona has closed but we did find where it used to be so that's a draw). The Lava Trees park is makred by a sign tht decalres itself 1.1 miles from the spot and then nothing else at all. First time round we were distracted by the lovely canopy of trees meeting overhead. Second time around I took us up a side road but we decided it must be a private house. Third time we didn't want to drive an unpaved road. Twice I gave up as we headed off down roads to the south and then turned back. Finally we approached from a die that gave the GPS enough of a signal for it to tell us where the turning was an be right. It looked familiar - it was road #2! The chickens mocked us and some island plant brought Simon out in nettle-like stings when he crouched down to photograph a fern unfolding but we found the lava trees, In 1790 a flow of lava swept through the rainforest so fast that iflowed up the trees and formed moulds around them - the trees inside burned away, leaving hollow lava trunks. The trees grow back around them, but many were cut down in a vain attempt to get rid of those noisy sonar frogs (you should hear the racket outside tonight), but that does put them more on display. Many have fallen and broken up, others have weathered away and a couple have saplings growing out of the top in best ironic Inigo fashion (hall! I am Rainforest Tree - you killed my trunkfather; prepare to fertilise). The bracket fungus is small but perfectly formed and brightly coloured.
We had a couple of false starts on the way to the Wai;Opae tide pools; we balked at another unpaved road (the gravel tends ot be lava cinders) and fetched up at a private gated community (locked gates! video surveillence!) but third time lucky. The swell is beatiful and the pools clear and welcoming but I'm still getting used ot my footing in the Fivefingers so we headed on to 'Ahanalui park, where there is a volcanic hot pool with the kind of steps into the water that real explorers spurn. I soaked and splashed and drifted for a while - the eels which the sign warned might be frisky did not appear (or shriek) and the waves crashed over the wall of the pool periodically to cool things down.
We followed the 137 as far as it goes these days, up and down some lovely humpbacks and to a brand new black beach. Kalapana used to be a village, until Pele sent the lava. Now the road ends abruptly and you can trek over the ridges and ropes of the new lava to a beach of coarse black send that's gradually becoming softer and finer; the waves came rushing over our feet, determined to help (and somewhere here I picked up the purple sand betwen my toes - the fivefingers fit so sungly the sand doesn't rub and you only know it's inside when you take them off and wash the sand off the outside. Back to what's left of the 130 road towards the lava viewing platform; this is another trek over new (1990s) lava to where the flow of lava from the volcano plunges into the sea, currently in twin streams. You can see the reflected glow in the cloud that boils up from the water and as it gets darker you cn occasinally see 'sparks' - which must be huge gobs of molten rock spewing up from the impact. The lava flow down the hill is marked by steam and after dark there was a lva breakthrough and we could see lines and spurts of lava flowing - though from a long way off. Nutters in boats were only a few hundred feet offshore from the outflow where the water literally boils so closer doesn't ahve all the advantages. Walking back over the uneven lava (marked by random spots of yellow duct tape) was actualy easier by torchlight and we tracked down yet another stripmall restaurant for dinner - Nori's Saimin. Saimin is ramen with the usual suspects - char siu park, cabbage, menma and in this case shredded omelette and a chicken teriyako skewer, with the option of won ton. Far too much to finish. The tree frogs waited for us: the sound drowns out the fridge and fan in the room!
We landed in Hilo after sleeping most of the way across the pacific and picked up the rental car; Simon thought a convertible would be fun and it is, but the boot is so tiny we have to put the suitcases on the back seat - and the easiest way to do that is to put the top down, so it's handy it's a convertible. It was baking sunshine but humid as well, so we cranked up the aircon and drove the coast road north to cool down, diverting onto the Scenic Four Mile Drive. Speeding through lush forest and looking down at streams tumbling over rocks I thought I recognised Hawaii; it's what a thousand landscaped hotel pools and decorations are trying to look like. But then you get to the cliffs and bays and waterfalls and fruit stands and fields of wild sugar came and it doesn't feel like an imitation of itself. We turned inland at Waimeia and drove over the slopes and lava fields down to Kona and Keahau and the hotel, where we just had time to snap the sunset, dip in the pool and have fish and chips at the bar watching the turtles and moray eels wim in the tidal pools.
I like a hotel where you can slide a bug screen across the whole window and leave it open so you can hear the sound of the waves to soothe you to sleep. With bad news from home we needed that, and we've been taking it easy, driving around tasting coffee and looking at pretty views. Highlights in no particualr order:
papaya and lime with fresh pineapple grated into the yoghurt for breakfast (although this morning I had a wafer-thin galette filled with tomato, lettuce, bacon and scrmabled eggs at Peaberry and Galette, a nice cafe - in the shopping mall
continuing the theme - dinner at Kenichi Pacific last night in the same mall; delicious Japanese pacific fusion. Simon had panko crusted swordfish, I had barely seared ono thin sliced and piled onto mashed white sweet potato with a mushroom foam for dipping (and we shared miso black cod and a tasty spider roll)
and again, tonight in Hilo - dinner in a mall, at the Hilo Cafe, which is both delicious and good value (duck confit,ribs, parmesan custard, ahi poke)
and Ceviche Dave's - in an industrial park rather than a mall: four varieties of the most amazing cevishe, done in cocnut milk or liliikoi joice or with shrimp
in the next block - the Kailua Candy chocolate factory shop and the Big Island ice cream factory shop
coffee tasting at Mountain Thunder and Greenwells, with tours showing the roasting, the colorimeter bean selection, the drying, the harvesting and the grafting onto giant coffee root stock (between the two of them)
seeing turtles swimming and basking on several beaches
seeing spinning dolphins spinning and leaping in the distance as we dodged the spray
driving to South Point - the most southerly point in the USA; followed by tasting sweetbread at the most southerly bakery in the USA
resisting buying yards of wonderful hawaiian print fabric at Kimura
the Kona brewing compay - great beers and delicious pizza in the pouring rain watching mongooses
yellow finches and red-headed cardinals and the ubiquitous gangs of myna birds (very few Unaccompanied Mynas)
We spent three days exploring the Kona coast; now we're going to roam around and out from Hilo.
- Music:tree frogs
Just the toes...
Originally uploaded by marypcb.
Head over to the TechRadar story for a few more details - including a shot that zooms in on the make of the model laptop at the front of the store...
I know this is called a 'store'; to me it's much more like an experience parlour, same as the Apple shops (where everything I ever want is out of stock when I go in, but that's just me). There are way cool things on Windows; Microsoft wants somewhere with brighter employees than Frys to show them off. It needs a fridge of Talking Rain at the back...
New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo.
EDIT: I should have included the attribution - I found it on http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/20
elimloth's recliner, I'm in love with it... it's a Norwegian company called Ekornes and not only do they do the Stressless recliner with separate footstool that I am currently coveting, with the option of a Stressless PC arm on the side, they do sofas with individually reclining seats, corner pieces and mixed reclining and fixed seats, with nifty ideas like swivelling cupholder trays that reveal a storage cubby for the remote controls. If it's all as comfortable as the recliner, I want to replace my office recliner chair and the sofa as well. The catalogue has lots of details (I'm giving the link because I don't want to have to download it just to be able to look at it again without typing in all my personal details the way I had to the first time, and the way I had to just to get the details of one dealer )Allders in Croydon). As you can tell, I'm a lot keener on the products than I am on the Web site; if I hadn't tried the chair I wouldn't have bothered to go through the rigmarole. And *nowhere* on the site is there any clue about the prices!
Technical note: this is a collage of about nine different shots of the waterfall as I couldn't get all of the fall in the viewfinder - it's the first time I've done a panorama in Windows Live Photo Gallery with multiple overlapping images that go both sideways and up and down
elimloth and have the usual (it always seems to be pad thai, mango chicken, yam pot and mango shakes) and discuss the Future of Hardware, and when we got back there was Pretty Sunset. Himself ran up the hill to get above the treeline; I just went onto the balcony ;-)
- Location:Kirkland, WA
I met $BIGNAMEPERSON
I did $BIGNAMEPERSON
I did $COOLTHING
I [emptied the dishwasher| did $MUNDANETHING]
Oh noes! I have been Phished
Helloes! I am a robot for $BIGNAMEBRAND
(did I miss any?)
One note: the contextual spelling is fantastic. A spelling checker that knows what's wrong with 'the been soup has bean sitting on the counter all day' is really useful; I use that option probably more than I ought to in Microsoft Word (the main difference is that it doesn't autocorrect on the grounds that I might actually want to write something that's not gramatically correct - changing people's words too much can make you unpopular).
- Location:Moscone, San Francicso
It's a nice weekend drive from San Diego to San Jose. Friday afternoon on the beaches of Coronado, Friday evening driving up the coast (past the glider park) and round in circles looking for the In-N-Out in Escondido, Saturday at the Wild Animal Park watching lions sleep and elephants flap ears in the heat, Saturday evening in Santa Monica watching the red, white and blue patterns on the ferris wheel and eating pasta at the Broadway diner (which like everywhere I've been this week serves the Groth sauv blanc), Sunday brunch at Coras Coffee Shoppe where the always ellent food includes tomato orange sweet preserve, Sunday fruit stop on the way inland after the sparkling socal beaches, Sunday afternoon coffee stop in Santa Barbara, Sunday evening dinner at the bar at Artisan (calamari with chipotle tomato and vinegar aoli sauces, flatiron steak, beignets with lemon curd and blueberry jam, triple chocolate creme brulee and a red rhone flight of which the standout was the Denner syrah), Monday wine tasting in Paso (Denner - where it's very hard to choose between the syrah and the even better syrah blends like Dirt Worshipper and where the construction is far enough along to be intruiging, Jada - where it is hard not to buy one of everything, Justin for a snack and a glass of sauv blanc, Whalebone because they've never been open before and Norman because we couldn't miss our favourite winery - especially when they have a case sale).
This post brought to you by a nice snooze in the car and the 'no slow tracks' 80s weekend on XM8. Back to work tomorrow with conferences, commissions, conference calls and doing my wretched taxes (: no wonder I'm snoozing...
sbisson into reading it I have no-one to talk about it with (obsession, absorption, friendship, meetings and clashing of minds, the origins of misogyny, the collocation of subtle hints that are either very clear or very funny in retrospect) so I'm left picking the quotations out of my teeth. My first thought was to sit down and hunt down all the quotations I didn't recognise. My second was that someone must have already done it. I think they have - by the name of Felix Strates - but the site doesn't load and only shows up in secondary references, not as a result on Google so I can't even look for a cache. Oh InterWebs! You fail me!- Location:Escondido, CA
TechRadar asked if I could cover MinWin in a really short piece. Probably not *that* short, I said.
The truth about MinWin: the heart of Windows 7
Everything else I know is going to be in Outlook 2010 (and the rest of the next Office) is covered over at http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-sto
- Location:Coronado Island, CA
So does solar, but Jeff Krisa from Tiga Energy gave me one of the best explanations I've had of why solar has advanced so slowly so far. Not just the dominance of the oil industry but the fact that it's a subsidised industry and subsidy suppresses innovation (if you get money at an inefficient level why try to get more efficient?). The rising cost of oil made it attractive to start work on solar again and there's some great materials science going on: using filters to use all the solar light wavelengths, not just the easy ones, making panels significantly cheaper by printing them onto a flexible substrate rather than glass (the substrate is cheaper, you don't need glass-moving robots or a massive clean room which means the energy cost is lower too). Tigo is working on the other side of things; getting the DC power out of the panels efficiently.
Today they're linked in serial in a monolithic system; all the power from all the panels in a series comes through together so one panel that's in shadow or out of alignment or just not working properly can pull down all the power you get out. Tiga distributes electronic monitoring and control throughout the solar array; instrumenting the panels lets you manage them independently and tapping them individually is more efficient. Getting more power out of the same solar array seems like a no brainer, as long as the installation costs are low enough.
And yes, you can get zapped by a solar panel; "whether the switch is on or off, as long as you have sun you have 400, 600 even a kilovolt running through the panel". Bad if you're trying to do maintenance or climb over the panel to put out a fire; Tigo says they can turn panels off and they'll be off. I wonder if making solar panels easier and safer to maintain puts the cost down overall even more?
Incidentally 80% of the world's nuclear power cores are now made by the Japanese steel industry and the next electric car out of Japan will cost less than $20,000 rather than $50,000. I wonder what the Japanese are doing in solar?
- Location:Coronado Island, CA
According to Cisco, the way to do it is to set up in China properly; relocate some VPs, hire lots of staff, design and manufacture there rather than just sending in plans. Although that exposes a lot more IP, it turns out you get viewed as a Chiense product and aren't then subject to the "alleged malpractices" that other companies have suffered in the past. There's something fundamental about the philosophy of doing business in China encapsulated there (maybe even the philosophy of China in terms of belonging and being foreign, which is interesting when Western business philosophy is just starting to acknowledge thta corporations act in their own interest, not the interests of their parent country) and it's contrary to the standard shortcut advice of 'don't take IP you don't want to lose to China'.
Tens of thousands of factories have shut down in China; 20 million migrant workers have lost their job, ten million have gone back to their villages - some of them pushed out almost deliberately to increase the manufacturing capability in the interior, according to Ira Kalish of Deloitte Research. The middle class in China hasn't lost jobs and they're still spending. That sounds like the recipe for a divided nation...
40% of the toxic US assets ended up on the books of European banks. Consumer debt as a proportion of GDP is higher in the UK than in the US, which I find hugely worrying compared to the popular perception that it's Americans who buy big cars and giant fridges and put them in huge houses (I said popular perception, remember). In 2006 US consumers got 200,000 billion dollars by 'cashing out' of their home equity; last year it was 20 billion; people don't move into smaller homes nearly often enough to earn that money. Interesting implications for the US/European recovery; all the predictions here at FiRE that don't rely on pseudo-phsyics say the US situation bottoms out at the end of 2009.
(In other news, if you get a Facebook message suggesting you check out some oddly worded site, do what I do with any spam that suggests a site without proving it's really from someone I know - don't click, delete the message and tell the alleged source they probably have a Facebook virus and should clean up their system (or get a better password, perhaps). Liam, this means you - amongst others.)
- Location:Coronado Island, CA
BlackBerry chief: Apple did us a favour
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-c
Facebook to fade away?
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/t
Vista SP2
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/o
Surface SP1
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/s
Office 2010: first look
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/a
The real story about Windows 7 compatibility
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/o
BLT does a BLT - bacon cheeseburger, optional cheese - and a range of other burgers. I always mean to try the pork and shrimp and always end up with a beef selection instead, because they're thick and juicy and correctly cooked (rare if you like, even). The sweet potato fries are great and the milkshakes are yummy whether they come with alchohol or not. Kind of a gourmet double-double ;-)
That gave us the energy not to boggle at the Caesar, Cleopatra and Centurion posing for tourist pictures outside Caesar's palace while Caesar - who verily doth seem to have come off an engagement at the Excalibur didst prettily entreat thou to partake of dinner in the new diner. The mini-Trevi fountain is flowing again - without the nebulisers - and the full-size Bellagio foundations were going on an odd schedule. Usually it's every 15 minutes in the evening, and the Voice announces the next time. Recently there has been no Voice and timing has been any old time. We arrived just in time for Simple Songs - one of my favourites - and had only walked a little way round when they started up on the Pink Panther music. And five minutes after that they did Time To Say Goodbye (opera riffing in English - much as last night we heard something that puts lyrics to Gabriel's Oboe from the Mission - insert purist sniff here). And then the Voice returned, putting the next performance half an hour later, so we glanced at the conservatory - still the butterfly house and zen garden, now with mums (pre-recession they would have sniffed at so prosaic a flower) - and flaked out.
Sunday brunch at the Wynne is still excellent - and crowded; it's not the worst queue I've ever seen in Vegas, but you can't call the place quiet. And the rest of the week we alternated conference sessions, hours of writing about Windows 7 and nipping out for dinner. Shibuya is as wonderful as ever, especially after seeing Ka. Ka was the first Cirque du Soleil I ever say and they've made it even better; the staging has changed - as has the stage. The hydraulic stage is even more flexible; at one point they 'shoot' arrows into it, turn it vertical and climb up and down them. The story seems a little darker; I don't remember the King and Queen (in chess-piece headsets) getting shot and I don't remember the Spurned Inventor (lucky in finding a meteor and devising gunpowder/unlucky in love) being blinded at the end. And the acrobat skipping rope and doing somersaults off the top of the Wheel of Death? wow!
We worked our way through a lot of the Venetian eating places. The new gelateria by the fountains in Palazzo - where we waited an hour for our room to be ready and were never called by the hotel, whose service level is dropping alarmingly - is is a little cramped but the ices are good. The Bastianich grazing Italian bar in St Mark's Square in the Venetian is pricey but excellent quality; try the fried cauliflower and the salted caramel gelato. The Grand Luxe Cafe is a cafe diner; my spaghetti vongole was good but not memorable. And the Del Monico steakhouse in Palazzo does excellent side dishes and cocktails and I'm impressed that they can cook a steak so thick evenly - but I really wasn't impressed by the steak over all; quantity stunning, quality meh.
The flight to Cincinnati on Delta was mixed; those first class seats at the front are comfy and the views are good, but Delta is too mean to carry enough sandwiches for everyone in first class and if the alternative is a chef salad then I'm not eating. The fudge brownie was OK but I'm very glad my sister was having a party for the new neighbours with a nice buffet spread ;-) It was very good to hang out with my ssiter and her new partner Brad and meet her friends again; we did dinner parties and the theatre (Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - all the seriousness of a school play with the intent to suspend disbelief but neither the skill nor the crane to do it, plus I must have missed the redeeming love interest in the book, but nice to see *performance* of any kind) and the pottery fair (my sister rushed for her favourite potter, I went round three times, restricted myself to three bowls and then bought a dinner service at Costco and took it to Los Angeles as carryon). We had an expedition to a craft and fabric shop that was miles and miles going and very near coming back; we checked out Busken Donuts (the local magazine said it was as much of a Cinci icon as goetta (go'dda), a scrapple-like concoction of fried pork, offal and oatmeal that we teased Pixie with all weekend) - it was very full of people picking up cakes for mother's day and only one working till, so they gave us the two donuts after ten minutes of queuing to save time and they were nice enough but not the Donut of My Dreams. We drove around and stopped at the overlook of the Purple People Bridge and the Golden Arches and enjoyed the spring weather and the not being in Orlando.
The week in-between we spent, not in Orlando proper but in the giant Marriot resort doing meetings, writing copy, doing meetings, grabbing half an hour in the pool, doing meettings over dinner, writing copy over dinner and falling down exhausted. LA was slightly more relaxed; we had time to have dinner most nights. As the bar food at the Sheraton is OK but not stunning, we explored for a few blocks around and twice ended up at Bottega Louie; a cavernous white space with high ceilings and ornate plaster cornicing, and a pastry and deli section and bar, and two glassed-in kitchens. The food and the portion sizes are variable; the small plate clams with garlic breadcrumbs were small and uninspiring, the ricotta spinach ravioli with peas and pancetta were delicious but really a starter size, the lasagna was meaty and rich and tasty and enormous but had no bechamel and very little cheese, the eggplant parmigiana was deconstructed (three slices) and superb expect for the fact that the tomato sauce was inordinately spicy and the pizza was excellent - a wonderful, moreish crust with a good rich tomato sauce and big dollops of mozzarella plus chunks of fennel sausage. The service was very attentive - the bus boy, the waiter, the maitre d' and the waiter who recognsied us from the first night all dropped by frequently to chat - but one night they brought me the wrong beer and one night the bread was very dry (it was excellent the other night though). It's nice to have an interesting, well-priced downtown restaurant so close to the hotels so I hope the things I'd mark them down for are execution details for what feels like a pretty new restaurant.
On the table, along with the chili flakes and the pre-grated-but-freshly-grated-real-parme
Walking back from Bottega Louie we spotted an imposing building with every floor and featute picekd out by LED lights. We know they were LED because they were colour cycling, like the pens you get at trade shows (or the illuminated cup holders in the Ford Focus we rented to get out of LA). This had the white painted building cycling from blue to purple to magenta to yellow to green and back to blue; most bizarre.
Friday night I adorned the hotel bar for a couple of drinks with our friend Thomas (I've never had a Mai Tai made with pineapple juice and we had already drunk them out of Anchor Steam) while Simon collected the colour-changing car and we headed off to Little Tokyo for sushi. I can never remember the name of the place we like (begins with O) but it's right at the end of the village square and has a solid wooden door and then one of those cloth dividers. We asked the sushi chef for omakase and I'm not sure what everything was; toro and hamachi and the eggy one and sweet shrimp (with one head each tempura'd and one head and shell each used to make miso soup) and three very white fish (maybe saba, maybe not) each with a dollop of sauce and a trickle of ponzu - the most memorable was minced green chili and yuzu. Dessert was lychee ice cream from one of the tiny shops and we loaded up the luggage and headed to a motel near Vermont. We usually stay at the North Hollywood Travelodge - nothing special but clean, cheap and quiet - but it was full so we tried the Days Inn in Thai Town. The decoration was great; giant oscar figurines and scenes from movies painted over the doors - Back To The Future and Cleopatra (our door) and the like, but the pool closed before we got there, the road was pretty busy and I'll blame the other guests for the ambience (because the tasteful sage green in the rooms was fine). First there was a group of friends standing in the middle of the parking lot chatting while one of the boys dropped his trousers round his ankles. Then there was a group of friends - maybe the same - having a friendly but loud conversation in the room above us. And then there was the woman sobbing her heart out in the next room a little too early next morning; she'd pause for breath and be utterly silent for nearly a minute and then start again with the frenzied, punctuated sobs. Luckily breakfast at Figaro on Vermont is always cheering; I might have already mentioned the bowl lattes and the bacon scrambled egg croissant with breakfast potatoes and a small dressed salad and delicious bread (baguette and something with a large crumb and slivers of chocolate) - but getting a parking space right outside with 30 minutes left on the meter and sitting on the sidewalk in the sun was pretty great too. And I know I've talked about the Griffith Observatory and Palm Springs and La Jolla so I'll just check us into the Glorietta Bay on Coronado island and get on with the Future in Review conference, where we have interesting people and plenty of sunshine and the first exhibition of the touring show of Dr Seuss sculptures - the Lorell and the tower of turtles and Sam with Green Eggs and Ham and of course The Cat, twice.
I think I can express myself rather better one-on-one or in a round table than on stage; I was excessively nervous about contributing to the predictions of the future session today - not only am I used to being the one doing the interviewing, not only is 'the state of print and online media and where we go in the next 3-5 years' rather too big to cover in under 5 minutes, not only did I feel very underqualified, sat as I was between the CTO of Xerox and a TED fellow who is piloting a text-based lookup system to check for counterfeit drugs in Ghana, but the microphone was only picking me up if I faced the audience and not the interviewer, so many apologies to Stephen Evans from the BBC World Service if I seemed to ignore any attempts to interject a question or head me off at the pass. I'd been planning to work up my thoughts (and notes) into a blog post and Scott Schramke of SNS asked me afterwards if I'd do it for the SNS blog, so I shall post a link when it goes up.
For dinner tonight we tried a brand new Italian around the corner called Vigilucci's, mainly because the manager interrupted his (very Italian) phone call to say 'buona sera' as we walked past (there's something about Italian hospitality - Ingilterra! they cried and asked us which football team we supported (Simon said 'the Mariners')). They have several other local restaurants including in La Jolla; this latest is in a brand new building - so new the four faces of the clock tower all tell a different time. We sat on the patio, gazing up at the stars; Simon's sirloin tip and porcini saffron risotto was deliciously rich and my four giant grilled langostini looked like sea monsters - it took the crackers and leverage on the table to snap off the spiny legs to suck out the tendrils and the blackened shell gave it a little tang. Bellissima!
- Location:Coronado Island, CA
It was so hot we were glad to sit inside at Shermans, where the menu continues to delight (Tongue sandwich - we haven't had any complaints, Chopped liver - try it, you'll like it). Stopping only for necessities (wasabi seaweed tempura crackers and tea lemonade from Trader Joes) we headed up into the mountains hoping for coolth. The road went from prettily landscaped with desert plants, just unusually neatly laid out, to swooping from side to side up the slope of a hill so much tht it looked like a mess of tracks in the distance and turned out to be *all one road*. We looked back on the loops from the Coachella Valley Vista, which reveals a flat, scarily green and developed swathe between dry, dusty, rocky mountains. But as you head further in to the San Jacinto mountains (the rhythm of the heat provided with nominative determinism by Heat FM), things get greener; there's an abundance of shrubs and yuccas and flowers and smoke trees and ocatillos and bushes. We stopped at a trail designed to explain the resources used by the Cahuilla (and how the last 500 of their 2,000 years in the US have been plagued by the loss of a huge fishing lake and the arrival of settlers) and saw a foot-long lizard. We drove generally up and over and over and up until the mountains climbed up enough to no longer be desert and then over the ridges of olive trees and vines into Temecula. Well - through the malls and enclave-burbs of the Greater Temecula Shopping Plain and into the quaint preserved street of downtown where they were having some species of town fair. This had stagecoach rides and miniature pony carriage rides and a Wild West play (I spotted the sheriff, bandit, schoolmarm and varmint characters) against cardboard cutout buildings. The olive oil tasting room was tempting - pomegranate balsamic vinegar is rather good and could work in a cocktail or a white sine spritzer, I think and it had the pink peruvian salt I shall have to explain in another post - the water misting sprays around restaurant patios were as welcome as in Palm Springs (and maybe a fraction more sustainable) - and the Starbucks was icily air conditioned and dispensed banana chocolate smoothies with a shot of espresso.
We looped around towrds the freeway and fled civilisation to drive up the slopes of Mount Palomar. The GPS suggested veering off through the orange groves and avocado trees; we followed the 'main' road and found hairpins bends galore - and the snowball diktat. The observatory is on a second ridge and closes to visitors at 4; you can see the dome as you drive up but not once you arrive. The state park is on the nearer ridge and gives a stunning view down the slopes - mountains, valleys and a huge casino stuck in the middle of a valley.
We headed in to Oceanside where hair cuts include neck shaves and Pier View Drive gives you the advertised view of the pier, followed the coast until the evening got too grey and took the fast roads to the motel and the In-N-Out (for which the slow road would have been far faster). Today we had a mix of meetings and demos at Qualcomm and finished up on the beach at La Jolla (pretty but grey), in the pelican-festooned bay at La Jolla (which scores points as another Veronica Mars location but loses them because pelicans are stinky birds with no sense of personal hygiene; it's all the fish says himself). The La Jolla travelodge is a bit pokey and the pool and jacuzzi are small and the booking had been mixed up and we shall Discuss whether they are charging us for two nights but the little Italian in town, Cafe Milano, is well worth a visit. The basil has a lovely aniseed edge, the pinot grigio was round and somewhere between fruity and fresh, the bread and bruschetta and risotto and pasta are good and the chocolate mouse is a huge glass of chocolate heaven. Maybe we'll do the animal park tomorrow...
We took
- Location:La Jolla
And just before we jumped into the pool, we thought of the road food... Luckily there's a fridge in the room* and the wrappers full of chocolate sauce have resolidified into who knows what. And we have bought a small cooler bag and a pack of BetterThanIce and 3 litres of water for tomorrow.
* We're staying at the Travelodge in Palm Springs again, which is such a nice place; it looks like any old motel - any two old motels in fact - but it's been repainted and done out in bably blue and chocolate brown with suede chairs and comfy beds and good showers and there's a nice little swimming pool that's 8 ft deep at one end and a huuuge toasty warm spa pool. I had to swim in the cold pool for a long time to cool down enough to enjoy that and then it was like a bath.... Best dinner in Palm Springs so far, at the Blue Coyote Grill**. It says Mexican and Southwestern and it's Cal-Mex and Mex, I think. Mango margarita made without any rubbishing sweet and sour or other contamination, Pacifico beer, roasted corn chowder with just the right amound of celery and red pepper in a creamy soup, spice-rubbed prime rib with chipotle mash and pork carnitas steamed in a banana leaf with red chile sauce (served with black beans and queso and rice that had corn and carrot in and sour cream and amazingly creamy guacamole and tortillas to make it into burritos. Yum! And yay for Hulu; after rather too much poking at the site we were able to watch the season finale of Chuck with nary a stutter (and a scary scary Intel advert for the co-inventor of USB getting mobbed by fans in the break room). Oh Orion! Oh boy!
** Not much like the also very nice Blue Coyote of old in Oxford that
tanais will remember.***I know I last left us leaving San Francisco for Las Vegas; I will round up the SFO-LVG-CVG-MCO-CVG-LAX portion of things because we had fun and frolics, but everything after April 30th was eaten by Windows 7 RC. Just a link list for what we wrote will take a whole blog post! Today was our first whole day off to ourselves for ages (not that we don't love all the fun we have with friends and family) and we don't have to be anywhere until San Diego 10am Monday ;-) Time for an explore...
- Location:Palm Springs
As Tuesday was my birthday and we fancied a nice brunch, we drove down Big Sur to get it; Cafe Kevah, the terrace deck at Nepenthe, which does the best eggs Benedict anywhere and the only crab eggs Benedict worth eating. It was unusually hot so we drowsed on the desk with the scrub jay for a while, then drove down to see the waterfall that cascades onto the beach and then back to Moss Landing (cute sea otters, dramatic seas) and up to Redwood City where saffronrose, mrkurt, Arthur, spikeiowa and Tom braved the hot evening and the delightful New England lighthouse ambience for lobster at the Old Port Lobster Shack (I adore any restaurant with a functional lighthouse, but the food here is great too - and even better for the company!).
Wednesday we worked solidly - well, not counting enjoying the cake for Opteron's 6th birthday - with just a quick break to soak in K&M's hot tub, as the weather had cooled down just enough to make that a delight. Thursday Simon got up at oh-dark-something to go to a virtualisation conference in the city and I ploughed through various writing and editing until spikeiowa wafted me away on a tour of local highlights (look! a really big Frys!) to lunch at Vino Locale in Palo Alto (where we saw the original tall trees, now somewhat snapped off at the top). The courtyard is full of flowers, the bathtub is full of corks and the small plates are tasty - thought the spice in the sausage in red wine does rather overwhelm *everything*. Also, do not talk to the chef about UK TV; he will want to talk for hours, quickly exhausting my knowledge of what's on TV these days.
Spike dropped me at the Caltrain station and I knitted my way into SF and walked up 4th St to Moscone, where there are more new hearts; these are about 5 feet tall and decorated in various ways - my favourite is a mosaic of marble that looks exactly like a painting of the Victorian houses in SF known as painted ladies, but when you get up to the surface it's simply marble cleverly placed. Across the street to the St Regis for dinner with Jon & Tamzen, who were celebrating their 21st anniversary. I think Simon's poutine and steak was good; the memory is overwhelmed by the superb black code with even better shrimp dumplings. And the pink Oregon method champenoise is delightfully fruity.
Friday, we alternated between meetings (AMD graphics, Skyfire - my favourite mobile browser, mainly because it doesn't limit itself to running on the mobile and does the heavy lifting in the data centre where it belongs, and EverNote - who were in the middle of a feature planning session that looks like it will answer most of my complaints) and taking books to BookBuyers. Lunch with Skyfire at Maru Ichi where the black garlic in the roast pork ramen is wonderful and while the eel in the combination plate is yummy, it doesn't leave you enough space to eat all the noodles. After that, In-N-Out was more than enough for dinner. And then we went to Frys, went to bed and went back to Frys to return the external battery we'd bought because it didn't put out enough juice to actually power a laptop. The hotel was about 4 minutes from the airport so we had time for chai and scones at the airport Starbucks before scoring the front seats on the Southwest flight. The view was very pretty and the pilot put his foot down so I got about ten minutes of work done before we landed 20+ minutes early; personally, I think he wanted to get the spoiled brat unaccompanied minors off the plane as fast as possible.
Next post: a week in Vegas when we see daylight maybe twice and I learn to hate the HP ecommerce site with a deep and passionate loathing (guess how long it took to order a replacement battery? just guess...)
We're off to Cafe Kevah for lunch to fix our jet lag.
Roots touched up: check. Am now blonde as can be.
Simon,s hair short for Orlando/Cinti heat: kind of (barely past his collar).
New PIN on new cash card and debit card: not quite.
New PIN on new debit card: found neatly filed in to do pile. Go back to ATM tomorrow. Leave house two days in a row!
Final tax details for my mother's estate. Eurgh.
Company and personal tax. If I don't finish the figures this weekend I can take the paperwork with me. Plus a lot of paperwork is sorted from the to do pile into a to file pile (filed!), a to do now pile (awaiting me in the sun) and a do later pile. UPDATE: notice how many of the shareholder services that tell you you can fill in bank details for direct deposit online actually mean to say you can sign up online, wait for a code to come on paper in the post and *then* fill in details online. By which time the paper form would have arrived and *they* would be doing the work. Self-service: a good con trick for reducing company admin costs.
Perishables eaten: not as urgent as sometimes. Tanais can have the big bag o' carrotts and the green ethylene absorbing bags (from the drugstore but available at Lakeland) make veg last for aaaaaages. Spring onions from February still springing.
Install and research BlackBerry small business apps: well, RIM's PR team did a sterling job of switching me over to a new handset with a SIM that doesn't complain about the app store, which works rather well actually. Next to set up PayPal on it (and doubtless discover that one of the phishing messages saying my account is locked was real).
Work out bills for next two months so no nasty surprises on the credit card. Errrmm...
Mend long white smart pants as short white pants don't look as smart as they might. May be creative and turn patch into extra back pocket.
Pack. Actually I hardly unpacked - just left things I'll probably travel with in the suitcase. Will still end up juggling piles of clothes on sunday.
Grate off knobbly bits on feet: PedEgg nowhere near as sharp as expected (expected microplane grater for skin) but gathered icky pile of skin gratings (cont tmi_chix).
Get old nail varnish off nails. Including last summer's polish on toes.
Empty camera. Of pictures taken in January. Errrmmm. Maybe I'll use the new SD card instead!
Order cat food. Boggle at how much cats eat,
Clean rug: not this time I fear.
Sort out books for BookBuyers: pile in middle hall, pile in front hall.
Review two netbooks: realise only one ever arrived :( UPDATE: Remember to actually post review at http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/maryb/)
UPDATE: Scan *yet more* statements for tax audit: a treat for this evening. Network scanning still takes two people in the absense of sheet feeder.
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